


Gone

by ComingandGoingByBubble



Category: A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder - Lutvak/Freedman
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-01 01:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12694494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComingandGoingByBubble/pseuds/ComingandGoingByBubble
Summary: Sibella and Lionel leave.





	1. Horrible Woman

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”  
-The Great Gatsby.

The Hollands up and left one day, with no note, no call, not a single word of notice.

  
Their butler had only sent a brief telegram since Phoebe and Monty’s servants kept calling for Mrs. Holland and received crypt answers.

  
Granted, such immediate departure from Clapham could only mean one thing; that Lionel found out about Sibella’s affair with Monty and that he wanted to move as far away as possible.

  
Phoebe didn’t disagree with his decision. She had thought of doing the same when she first found out about Monty’s affair. She understood where Lionel was coming from… she knew how hurt and humiliated he must feel.

  
But that didn’t excuse Sibella’s unexpected silence.

  
Phoebe pondered over the whole situation as she climbed the stairs to go tell Monty. The telegram from the Holland’s butler trembled in her hands.  
It wasn’t like Sibella to just up and leave like this. She would never do such a thing to Monty… or to Phoebe. She couldn’t.

  
Her stomach hurt suddenly, and Phoebe felt tears come to her eyes as the reality of the situation weighed down on her.

  
Sibella had left, and she was probably never coming back. And she hadn’t told them. Hadn’t said a word, or made any indication.

  
She had just vanished. Like a ghost.

  
Phoebe gripped the banister tightly as her head spun. She wondered how freeing it would be to just up and leave one day, to escape the consequences of her actions, and leave them to the dust?

  
She envied Sibella but she also hated her for this. Surely the woman would know what this would do to Monty. He’d be crushed, tormented. Phoebe knew that she would have to talk him out of going after her…. Talk him out of killing Lionel for taking her away.

  
She reached Monty’s door and her hands trembled hard. A sudden chill took her.

  
She didn’t know if she could do this… how could she, Monty’s loving wife who knew she wasn’t her husband’s one and only, tell him that his one true love just vanished out of thin air with no notice?

  
She swallowed hard and opened the door.

  
Monty looked up from his stack of papers, and for a moment Phoebe was blinded from seeing him due to the glare from the setting sun.

  
“M-Monty…” she barely got out in a whisper.

  
“Darling,” the papers were quickly forgotten about, “What’s wrong?” He pulled her into a chair and looked overly concerned.

His eyes glanced at the telegram. “Phoebe… what is it?”

  
“It’s Sibella… she’s gone,” she whimpered.

  
Monty’s face paled. “Gone, Phoebe what do you mean? Is she- no she can’t be- “Panic set in his eyes.

  
“She’s not dead Monty. But she’s gone. She and Lionel… they just left.” Phoebe started to cry then.

  
Monty stiffened besides her, as still as a statue. Phoebe was too concerned with crying to look at him. She couldn’t look at him. For as much as she knew that Monty loved Sibella, she had loved her too and this sudden absence of her hurt Phoebe just as much as it hurt Monty.

  
“She can’t be gone,” Monty uttered after a while. “That’s not…. She can’t be…”

  
“She is…” Phoebe handed him the telegram. He read it over. And then he read it over again, and again, and again as if reading it over and over would change the contents of the telegram.

  
“Where?” was his next question.

  
Phoebe shook her head, “I don’t know.” She sniffled and tried to compose herself.

  
“Someone must know.” Monty got up and began to pace, clutching the telegram in his hand so tightly that he tore through it, “They can’t have gone far. I need to go find them.”

  
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found Monty… maybe she left for a reason…” Phoebe found herself speaking suddenly.

  
Monty whirled around at her. “She couldn’t have! She loved me, she loved us! She can’t just leave!” he yelled.

  
“Monty, she’s gone…”

  
“No!”

  
He knocked over a stack of papers to the ground in anger. Next, he threw a potted plant she had given him for Christmas across the room into the book shelf. Phoebe jumped when it shattered.

  
“Monty, we can’t do anything if she has decided to leave,” she tried to reason with him. “We can’t bring her back if she doesn’t want to be here.”

  
“But she does. She does want to be here. This is Lionel’s doing, I tell you. I know it. He did this, he put her up to this…. I’ll kill him if he threatened her,” he swore, his voice low, “I’ll kill him.”

  
“Monty, stop it, we can’t change it. What’s done is done.”

  
He looked up at her, hurt.

  
“How can you say that? How can you say that about her? I thought you loved her too!”

  
Phoebe snapped then.

  
“Of course, I loved her too, you idiot! I loved her with every fiber of my being! I lived to see her be happy and I would do anything to see her again, but we can’t keep going after her. She’s not ours to have, no matter how much we want her.”

  
Afterwards, Phoebe dissipated into tears. She fell to the floor crying. Monty knelt next to her.

  
“I’m sorry, my darling. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just… emotions are high right now. I’m so sorry, please stop crying,” he begged her, kissing at her ear.  
She looked up at him with tear stained eyes.

  
“Just because you are a man doesn’t mean that you get to pretend like you are the only she loved or the only one that loved her back,” she whispered.

  
He nodded after a moment. “I know. I’m so sorry. I know you loved her too,” he murmured as he pulled her in close and held her.

  
Phoebe started to cry all over again in his arms.

  
“Do you think she knows?” she asked after she had stopped crying. The room was dark now. The sun had set.

  
“Knows what, my love?” he asked as he rubbed her back.

  
“Do you think she knows how much she’s destroyed us by leaving?” Phoebe cried.

  
He was quiet for a moment.

  
“I’d like to think so… I’d like to think she’s somewhat remorseful for what she’s done. But you know, our Sibella, she’ll put a smile on her face and pretend like nothing ever happened,” Monty said bitterly. “She’ll probably lie and say that it was for the best.”

  
“I hate her for doing this,” Phoebe whimpered.

  
“I know. I do too, I do too…”

  
They spent the rest of the night in Monty’s study although neither of them slept at all. They had been up all night, trying to figure out why in the world their lover had just up and left… the memory of her haunted them both like an ever present and lingering spirit.


	2. Chapter 2

Sibella had refused to speak with him for three days.

She hadn’t said a single word since he told her that they were leaving and that they were never coming back.

  
Lionel knew part of it was because she probably hated him entirely for this. He knew that his wife was not happy about leaving her lovers, but Lionel had had enough.

  
It was one thing for his wife to be parading around town with her lovers, but it was another matter entirely for her to become pregnant by one of them, nevertheless, the man she truly loved.

  
It made Lionel’s blood boil, to be so disrespected like that. It was common, even encouraged for husbands and wives to have affairs, but they should never end in pregnancy.

  
He supposed his wife thought him stupid, thought that he might not be able to count or some trivial matter like that, but he was a smart man.

  
He knew that his wife came home smelling like Monty Navarro, and on some occasions Phoebe D’ysquith. He knew that his wife was engaged in some twisted relationship between the two of them, but he had had enough.

  
This was the last straw.

  
So when he had found his wife, vomiting in the bathroom, her stomach slightly swollen, it all fell into place for him.

  
He had snapped. For he knew that it wasn’t his. Sibella hadn’t made love to him in months. Lionel had always been away, or Sibella had feigned being tired, and there was never any time.

  
Lionel could tell by the way his wife had looked at him when he had asked her that she hadn’t told a soul. That was very much like Sibella. She wasn’t one to blab about a secret such as this. His wife knew what a precarious situation this was.

  
And now she refused to speak at all, and her complexion was pale as it had been for the last three days since he had shouted at her that they were leaving this godforsaken place.

  
She hadn’t fought him, which had been a slight surprise. She had quietly submitted to him. Maybe her wits had kicked in then, and the fear of being ousted in high society had kept her quiet and silent.

  
If there was anything that scared Sibella more than death it was the threat of scandal and the collapse of the life and luxury she had lived in for so long.

  
He turned to look at her in the motorcar, but she turned her head and looked out the window. Her fingers clenched the fabric of her dress tightly.

  
He sat in silence for a bit longer before he opened his mouth to speak.

  
“Do you love him?”

  
Silence.

  
He frowned irritably and shifted towards her.

  
“Sibella… I’m not stupid. I know of your… relations with Monty… and his wife… and I only want to know why…. Why would you do such a thing? I can see engaging with a man… but a woman… what in the world were you thinking?”

  
His wife tensed up. Her hands stayed clenching her dress and they trembled slightly.

  
Lionel got annoyed at her silence.

  
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. If we’re lucky, you’ll never have to see them again. And we will raise this child as our own.” He sat back in his seat.

  
Her hands loosened and she turned towards him.

  
“What?” she asked hoarsely.

  
“We’ll raise this child as our own,” he repeated.

  
She narrowed her eyes in confusion.

  
“You don’t want me to…” she drifted off but he understood what she meant.

  
“No,” he answered honestly. “I wouldn’t do that to you. That’s not fair, a child is a child.”

  
She looked at him curiously, her head tilted.

  
“Sibella, I’m not the monster that you think I am,” he said softly. “I know we’ve had our difficulties, but I do love you. I want you to be happy. I just… I just can’t stand to be disrespected like this. So I made the best decision for us.”

  
“You decided to take away my happiness, take me away from the people I love and care about?” Her voice was laced with bitterness.

  
“I’m sorry I don’t make you as happy as Monty or Phoebe does,” he replied after a moment, “But may I remind you that you decided to marry me, and not Monty?”  
She stiffened at the reminder.

  
“If you loved him so much, why did you marry me?” he asked.

  
“I don’t know,” she answered softly after a moment.

  
“Do you regret it? Our marriage?”

  
She didn’t look him in the eyes but she nodded slowly. Lionel felt defeated in that instant.

  
“Do you… do you regret marrying me?” she asked.

  
He pondered over that.

  
“No, not necessarily.”

Her face conveyed surprise at that.

  
“Don’t you hate me for cheating on you?” she asked him.

  
“I’m angry, of course. I’d expect anyone to be angry at such a fact. I feel disrespected. But I don’t hate you.”

  
She was quiet then.  
He drove on in silence.

  
“I guess, that we are both just going to have to find some happiness in our mutual misery with one another,” he said after a bit.

  
“What kind of marriage is that?” Sibella laughed bitterly.

  
“Most of them, if I’m correct. Many marriages are unhappy ones,” he replied.

  
“I’d rather be dead than married then,” she murmured.

  
He stopped the car and turned to look at her, really look at her.

  
“I know I’ve been quite tolerant of your… relations with Mr. and Mrs. Navarro, some might say I’d even been generous. Another man might put you in a nut house, for sexual misconduct, might make you get rid of that child. Be grateful that I’ve been so understanding and forgiving. You are my wife, Sibella. My wife. I’m sorry if you are not happy with me, but we are bound to each other until the day we die. I know I’m not Monty, but I will protect you. If you and I got divorced, you would be thrown into the streets or worse.”

  
“What are you getting at?” she asked in a tight voice.

  
“Forget Monty, forget Phoebe. They’re as good as dead to you now. You don’t need them.”

  
“How do you know what I need?” she snapped back at him.

  
He grabbed onto her wrist and held it tight. She winced.

  
“Do you understand that I could ruin you? With one whisper to the papers, I could cause you, and your beloved Monty and Phoebe to be arrested and possibly hanged? Do you want that to happen?”

  
She shook her head.

  
“Forget them, Sibella. Don’t even think about them anymore. They’re ghosts to you now,” he demanded.

  
Sibella’s eyes filled with tears, but Lionel was too busy starting the car back up again to notice.

  
“If anyone asks, this child is mine. If anyone asks why we moved, we said to be closer to my family, do you understand?”

  
She said nothing as they drove.

  
“You’re not even half the man that he is,” she grumbled in a low voice.

  
Lionel’s blood boiled at that.

  
“I told you not to speak of him ever again,” he threatened.

  
She dared to glare at him. He glared back at her.

  
“I’ll speak of them as often as I’d like to, and you can’t stop me.”

  
“Sibella, do not push me,” he growled.

  
“You don’t love me, you never have and you never will. You just want me as a thing, as a perfect wife to show off to your business cronies!” she snapped at him.

  
“You agreed to marry me, so whose fault is that?” he shouted.

  
She shrieked something in aggravation and looked back out the window.

  
“Don’t speak of them again, or I swear you will regret it,” he threatened.

  
Sibella crossed her arms over her chest in annoyance.

  
Lionel drove on, his knuckles tight around the steering wheel. He wondered if all of this aggravation was worth it, if Sibella was worth all of this.  
They spent the rest of the drive in a tense silence, both of them brewing in their own misery and frustration.


	3. Chapter 3

Monty had spent the past three days in his office. Phoebe had tried to coax him to leave, but it had been to no success on her part. Empty bottle after empty bottle surrounded him. There was nothing his beloved wife could do to get him out of his slump.

  
Eventually, Phoebe gave up, after the second day or so, and she herself retired to her room in solitude.

  
The servants began to get worried, but Monty was past the point of caring. Sibella, his world, was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

  
He wanted nothing more than to kill Lionel Holland with his bare hands, to choke the life out of him and set Sibella free.

  
How dare he take her away… how dare he force her to leave against her will?

  
His hand clenched as he thought of how it must have happened. He wondered if Sibella had put up a fight, if she had begged Lionel to stay even though she knew it wouldn’t work…. He hoped that she had at least tried.

  
He took another sip of sherry.

  
Why now?

  
His and Phoebe’s affair with Sibella had been going on for a year or so, and his own personal affair with Sibella had its beginnings since their childhood, and he wondered what had tipped Lionel off.

  
What had he known? Had he seen them? Had he heard whispers amongst his peers, his business associates?

  
Sibella hadn’t given him any indication that her husband had known anything the last time he had seen her. She hadn’t said a word. She was all smiles and kisses. But, now that he thought on it…. There had been something.

  
Something in her eyes, something that only Monty knew. After all, he knew her better than anyone else.

  
A gasp escaped his lips as he suddenly put it all together. He sprung up from his chair, and bolted to Phoebe’s room. He didn’t wait to announce his arrival, and he stormed in, out of breath and in a daze.

  
Phoebe was sitting on her bed with a book in her hands. She glanced up at him, immediately looking concerned, for Monty was sure he looked like a mad man.

  
“Darling, what is it?”

  
“I know why she left…” He murmured.

  
Suddenly he was hesitant in telling her. He didn’t want to hurt her. She had already been through so much, but he had said too much to go back now.

  
Concern filled her features. “Why did she leave?” She pulled her light blue dressing gown to her body tightly.

  
He swallowed hard.

  
“Because she’s pregnant… with my child.”

  
Phoebe’s face fell only slightly. He gave her all the credit in the world for keeping her composure. She was a wonderful woman in that regard.

  
“Oh.”

  
He hurried to her side and gently took her hand.

  
“My darling, I’m so sorry for you to find out this way… but it’s the only thing that makes sense. And Sibella and I… we had…”

  
“Did she tell you?” Phoebe asked softly, glancing up at him.

  
“No.” He shook his head. “You know our Sibella. She’s not one to tell her assumptions until she’s completely sure of the fact. And I gather she wasn’t too sure about this-“

  
“But Lionel was,” Phoebe uttered, cutting him off.

  
He nodded slowly.

  
“Yes, I think that’s what happened.”

  
Phoebe sat back against the pillows and closed her book. She brought one hand up to her mouth and bit on her nails nervously.

  
“And so he took her away,” whispered Phoebe. She looked to Monty. A look of horror filled her face as she tried to process this. Monty was sure he had a similar complexion.

  
“What do we do now?” she whispered in fright.

  
“I don’t know,” he replied after a moment. “I really don’t know.”

  
She leaned into him, her head resting on his shoulder. He ran his fingers absentmindedly through her tresses. He heard her sigh sadly.

  
“I miss her.”

  
“I miss her too.”

  
It was a while until someone spoke again. It was Monty who broke the silence.

  
“I’m sorry for abandoning you these past few days. You know you mean the world to me,” he murmured in her ear, “I just…. It was just so hard for me to grasp that….”

  
Phoebe looked up at him, her eyes clear and staring straight into his soul.

  
“You love her more, I know you do. It does no good to lie to me, Monty. I know what you and Sibella have is different than what you and I have… or what Sibella and I too, but it hurt to see you recoil away from me just because she was gone. I thought that we would at least stick together through this.”

  
Monty hung his head in shame.

  
“I know. We should have done that. That was my fault and I am so sorry.” He leaned in to kiss her lips. She placed a hand on his chest, stopping him.

  
“Do you really love me as well as her?”

  
“You know I do.”

  
“Your previous actions tell me otherwise.” Her voice turned uncharacteristically acidic. Monty straightened up.

  
“I love you and Sibella equally. You know if you had been taken instead of Sibella, I would have fought just as hard for you.”

  
Her eyes flickered to meet his. She nodded slowly after a while.

  
“I love you too,” she replied at last. Her hand moved from his chest and laid itself on her lap.

  
He leaned in and kissed her. She kissed him back hard.

  
“Do you fear that she’s lost forever?” Phoebe murmured to him.

  
“I’d like to think that she’s not, but you know our Sibella. She won’t risk a scandal… I doubt we’ll see her again in a long time,” the words felt like daggers in his heart to say but he knew they were the truth.

  
When he looked down at Phoebe, he saw that tears were blooming in her eyes. He kissed the top of her head gently.

  
“She was the only female friend I’ve ever really had. She was so lovely and wonderful, even if she could be dramatic sometimes. She was real. She was so engaging and lively. I loved being around her, I loved everything about her. Her love was genuine.”

  
“That it was,” murmured Monty in agreement.

  
Phoebe licked her lips then. Monty noticed.

  
“What is it, my love?”

  
“What of the child?” she asked slowly.

  
Monty tensed up at that.

  
“I don’t know my dear, I guess that there is nothing that I can do. I can’t prove that it’s my child… not entirely… and since Sibella and Lionel aren’t living here anymore, I gather I won’t see the child ever.”

  
“But it’s your child.”

  
“Do you think Lionel will let that child come within ten feet of me?” He spat out bitterly, “No, he’ll raise that child as his own, just to torment me.”

  
Phoebe caressed his cheek softly.

  
“Don’t you think Sibella might let you and come see the child?”

  
“And risk me making a scene? I doubt it. Maybe when the old codger has died, she’ll come back to us…”

  
“I’m so sorry Monty,” she said earnestly. When he looked at her, her eyes were welled up with tears.

  
“Don’t you be sad for me now, it’s not your fault.”

  
“But-“

  
“No, I won’t hear it,” he shushed her, knowing the same argument that she was going to recite. How if he had never married her, he would have been free to marry Sibella and so on and so forth.

  
“I love you,” he murmured as he kissed her, “And I know she loved you too, but I guess we’ll both have to move on without her.”

  
“Can you do that?” she asked him.

  
Monty paused. He wasn’t sure if he could, because he had never had to live without her. The thought of living in a world where he never saw her was dismal, bleak… a world without color. But at least he had Phoebe. Thank God for Phoebe. She brought some of the color back into his life.

  
“I think I can,” he kissed her, “I will. For you… for us.”

  
Phoebe smiled gently and kissed his lips again, “Yes, for us,” she echoed.

  
She curled up against him and they fell asleep soon after that, content in each other’s arms.


	4. Chapter 4

She missed them both terribly, but it was a silent yearning for she could not voice such heartbreak to her husband, but Monty and Phoebe were always on her mind.  
She knew that because of the situation that there was no alternative other than her leaving Clapham with Lionel. She knew that she had to leave. But it still didn’t make it any easier.

  
Still, she did what she had to do, for the sake of her reputation, her marriage, her status in society. Not that any of that really mattered to her anymore. Her marriage left a sour taste in her mouth, her status nothing more than a seat at the table, and her reputation was still wavering in the eyes of others despite her best efforts to rectify it.

  
She could have never left Clapham, never had left Phoebe and Monty. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own head, she could have put up a fight. She could have fought for her right to stay, not that Lionel would have listened anyways, but having fought for herself might have made her feel somewhat better.  
She glanced over at her husband as they sat there quietly at the dinner table. He wasn’t looking at her, engrossed in his evening paper. She felt ignored, lonely. Her stomach hurt, and she wanted nothing more than to be at Highhurst with Phoebe and Monty.

She could only imagine how nice that would be. Monty would feed her chocolates, while Phoebe read to her. It would be utter bliss.

  
Not to mention that Monty would actually know the existence of his own child. She deeply regretted not telling him that before she left, but she had been so startled and shocked, she didn’t want to send him into such a state. She had no doubt that he had put the pieces together by now, and that he hated her immensely for it.

  
She absentmindedly placed her hand on her stomach.

  
“Is it bothering you?” Lionel never looked up from his paper as he spoke to her.

  
“No, the baby’s fine,” she replied quickly. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  
Lionel gave her a small nod, and still didn’t look up from his reading.

  
Sibella sighed heavily. She wanted nothing more to go back to Highhurst and be free of her husband. She knew that even asking him if she could go back would upset him, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to see if maybe she could… she missed her lovers so much.

  
“I’ve been thinking…” she started.

  
“Have you?” Lionel interrupted.

  
She set her mouth into a tight line. She knew that this was never going to go anywhere.

  
“Forget it. It’s not important,” she rose from the table abruptly and retreated into her room. She sat on her bed, combing her fingers through her curls, tears threatening to fall from her eyes.

 

She wished she had never married him. She hated being his wife. He made her so miserable.

  
Tears fell from her eyes softly, and she wiped them away with a hand. She took a breath, and resolved that as long as she was living and she was stuck being married to Lionel, that she would find her own joy. Having been taken from the only people who made her happy, Sibella prayed fervently that this child would bring her some sort of happiness. She needed it. Otherwise, she didn’t know what she would do.

  
Months passed, and soon the baby arrived, quicker than Sibella had expected.

  
As the nurses placed the baby girl in her arms, Sibella glanced down and felt a burst of joy in her heart.

  
The child had Monty’s eyes.

  
Her lips twisted into a genuine grin, and she knew in that moment, that she would be okay, no matter what happened. True, she would be far away from her loves, and would probably not see them again for a while, but she still had bits and pieces of them in her life.

 

She named the girl, Bella, for the belladonnas that Phoebe loved so dearly.

  
Lionel did not smile, but Sibella did, and that’s all that mattered.


End file.
